Cybersecurity risks to get worse: Warren Buffett

"There's a very material risk which did not exist 10 or 15 years ago and will be much more intense as the years go along."

Warren Buffet: Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, is one of the big names in philanthropy and charity. Being one of the creators of the Giving Pledge along with Bill and Melinda Gates he has pledged more than 99 percent of his own wealth to charitable causes during his lifetime or upon his death. He also announced that he will continue to annually distribute about 4 percent of the shares he retain annually. He also said that the proceeds from all of his Berkshire shares will be expended for philanthropic purposes.

Showing his concern about the threat to the insurance industry, CEO of multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett has said that cybersecurity risks will get worse in the years to come.

“Cyber is uncharted territory. It’s going to get worse, not better,” CNBC quoted Buffett as saying at the company’s annual meeting held at Omaha city in the US state of Nebraska late on Saturday.

He said he believed that cybersecurity incidents would rise and with it the potential to significantly harm the insurance industry.

“There’s a very material risk which did not exist 10 or 15 years ago and will be much more intense as the years go along,” he added.

Buffett said he does not want “much underwriting exposure to cybersecurity threats for Berkshire’s insurance businesses”.

According to the executive, the company has a “pretty good idea” on how to properly assess the probabilities for earthquakes in California and hurricanes in Florida, but not with computer hacking threats.

The investor expressed scepticism that any insurance company can assess the risk for cybersecurity events, the CNBC report said.

“We don’t want to be a pioneer on this… I think anybody that tells you now they think they know in some actuarial way either what (the) general experience is like in the future, or what the worst case can be, is kidding themselves,” he added.

Buffett also announced that Berkshire Hathaway has acquired another 75 million shares of Apple and now has 5 per cent stake in the company.

At the end of the first quarter of 2018, Berkshire owned $40.7 billion of Apple’s shares — up from $28.2 billion at the end of 2017, The New York Times reported.